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Current Plugin Manager UI does not allow to recognize origin of the module (stable UC, alfa UC, SDK Catalog, etc..) nor the category of the module. Everything is mixed in one list.
I think this is regression in usability.
Not true, each plugin shows own source: either Development Update Center, Stable UC etc. by UI spec.
Ok, I see, it is in the description of the module. May be I should better describe our use case to understand the usability problem. We have a user that would like to see available SDKs from catalog and install some of them. In the old version it worked following way: 1. user selected SDK Catalog UC 2. user got a tree organized by category (in our case by provider of the SDK) 3. user selected from the SDKs 4. user downloaded and installed the SDKs Now the scenario is little bit complicated: 1. Plugin Manager downloads everything from all UCs 2. user goes to New Plugins and see Developer Collaboration, Maven and link 88 more... 3. user clicks 88 more.. and got alphabetical list of 88 modules. Which of them are SDKs? 4. user has to know the name of the SDK to select or scroll down one-by-one to look for Source: Java ME Platform SDK Catalog 5. download and install is then simple This is a hight-priority usability issue for us.
Review of UI spec. is done long time ago, no way to switch to TreeTableView after FF. Note there is a possibility to filter plugin by search field, ie. type 'SDK' and only plugins from SDK UC are visible. Frankly speaking, I don't see any way how to present plugins by its source in current Plugin Manager layout. We didn't catch this usability requirement while Plugin Manager UI designing. We can track it for future Plugin Manager redesign after NB6. If there is no strong objection I'm going change to RFE for a next release.
Adame, the old tree-like view is gone. What the user is supposed to be doing with the new UI is searching. So, one possible way for the user is to type SDK into the Search field and find the appropriate plugin in the filtered list. Do you think this would work for your users? There are two more things we could do, but both would mean making the UI more complicated, so there must be a good justification for it: (1) add another filtering option besides the Search field above the table - a combo with a list of Update Centers which would also have an option "all" (selected by default) (2) add the column Category back to the table, so that the user would be able to sort the table by categories; note that categories are now hidden in the UI, but all modules still have a category declared and the Search field looks into this property as well as into name and description
After integrating issue 110566 this problem was fixed.